Shock
by PastaEatingNerd
Summary: An AU inspired by the '40s Vincent Price film 'Shock.' Bucky can't remember how he became the Winter Soldier. Alexander Pierce is intent on Bucky staying that way. Natasha becomes increasingly suspicious and tries to help Steve save his friend.
1. Chapter 1

"I want you to try and remember,"

He's freezing, shivering so hard that his metal arm makes a clanging sound against his restraints. Images rush through his head at the speed of light. Snow. A train. He's falling, the icy air like daggers against his skin. His heart races, pounding against his chest and like an engine beneath his ribs. He's breaking. His bones shatter as he hits the snow. He feels the wind knocked out of him before he feels the pain and when the pain comes, it blinds him. His vision blurs, his breathing slows, and everything he is becomes that sharp, stabbing pain…and they're amputating his arm…and they're telling him that the man he used died that day in the snow and that the creature he's become is barely human…and he's freezing. So horribly, bitterly cold that the ice that surrounds him freezes away his identity, his consciousness…and it's so dark. He can't stay awake. His body's shutting down. The cold consumes him, shriveling him into nothing…nothing…

"You've woken in the HYDRA facilities after a long stint in cryogenic stasis. There is one thing on your mind: your mission. You must kill Captain America. Kill Captain America. Captain America."

Bright lights flood his eyes, his memories evaporating with the melting ice. His stiff limbs stir, shooting bursts of pain through his muscles. He shouldn't be hurting. Human beings with names and identities and memories, they hurt. He shouldn't hurt, but there's a part of him that never entirely disappeared when he died.

"Steve…" he breathes, the image of pale blue eyes and flaxen hair rising up from deep inside him. He can hear the man called Steve calling out to him, calling the name James Buchanan Barnes, _Bucky_, with an aching tenderness. The memory, intertwining itself with his aching joints, reminds him that he was once a human being. That he once was loved…

_I'm with you 'til the end of the line…_

The pain in his muscles is gone and with it, the apparition of the man called Steve. His friend. Humans had friends. Humans could love. But the human who called himself James Buchanan Barnes was dead. He was the Winter Soldier now. And someone was giving him is mission. Someone…someone named Alexander Pierce, the same Alexander Pierce that stood over him now… was telling him to kill Captain America…Captain America with his icy blue eyes, with his blonde hair peeking out from beneath his helmet…

"It was you! It was you! You made me try to kill Steve! And now you're going to kill me! No! No! Stop it! Stop!" Before he realizes it, a scream has torn itself from his throat, echoing against the metal walls of the facility. He screams for hours, calling out for Steve. He curses the man called Alexander Pierce in a vain attempt to mask the sheer terror that consumes him. He won't do it. He won't kill Steve…but he's afraid, afraid of Pierce. Afraid of himself… "No! No! Don't do it! Don't make me kill him! No…"

After what seems an eternity of hysteria, he eventually exhausts himself and falls into a restless sleep. He wishes he could recall those memories behind his eyes but he knows all too well that he cannot dream. James Buchanan Barnes could dream…but James Buchanan Barnes is dead.

"Give me the hypodermic, Rumlow," says Pierce in a harsh whisper, "the Good Captain will be in to see the weapon tomorrow so putting it back in cryo is out of the question. It has fallen into a state of psychic shock brought on by the reunion with its former friend. Keep it sedated until the Captain arrives. He is under the impression that the weapon acted without our influence, that we're providing them both a mercy by nursing the former James Buchanan Barnes back to health. The Captain has no idea that it was us who engaged the weapon in the first place."

"And if he discovers our plan by other means?"

"That's the beauty of it, Rumlow," Pierce replies, "we'll just have to tell the populace that despite our best efforts, we couldn't undo the damage that HYDRA had done to our poor Winter Soldier, that our dear Captain America was too trusting of his old friend, that the faith Steve Rogers had in old fashioned heroism, his greatest quality, was the reason for his tragic death."


	2. Chapter 2

It's an understatement to say that Natasha is suspicious. Efforts to catch the Winter Soldier have always failed before, even when SHIELD led them. There is only one reason this could possibly have happened and Natasha knows it all too well. It's convincing Steve that might present a problem. Once again, his propensity for loyalty is proving itself as inconvenient as it is endearing. She isn't sure whether to give his hand a squeeze or to punch him square in the jaw…or both.

"I don't care if it _is_ a trap. I have to see him. I just have to."

Steve isn't naive. He knows the danger…but he clearly doesn't understand it, not like Natasha does, anyway. It has never been Steve's mission to kill. It has always been to protect, to defend, or to rescue. Fighting is necessary but always as a means to an end, as far as Steve is concerned.

Death has been that end for Natasha; Natasha the sniper, Natasha the assassin, Natasha the living weapon. She knows murder better than the callouses on her hands. At a glance, she can differentiate cyanide from strychnine, smell the traces of antifreeze in honey, know which magazines go to which guns, and how best to conceal the evidence of ammunition shells. It was a job for her, the ending of lives, and it's not something she can forget so easily.

Steve, on the other hand, has never been assigned an assassination mission. He'll never understand what it means to plan a death, to debate poison over bullets over knives. He'll never feel a sense of accomplishment upon seeing the light leave the eyes of his enemies.

Steve is not a killer. He cannot recognize a killer.

But Natasha can, and she does. The only ones who can catch a ghost are the ones who took it from its grave. Live bait is necessary when the hunting dog begins to catch wise. SHIELD's secrets run deep and trying to decode them is akin to digging to the Earth's core, a lifetime of work only to be burned and melted upon getting close enough. Captain America has taken his all-American independence too far, and SHIELD would rather euthanize their favorite hunting dog than risk disobedience. Steve Rogers is disposable. The Captain America title can be given to the soldier most willing to obey. After all, when you cut off one head, two others will always take its place.

"I can't convince you not to go. Go if you feel you have to. But I'm coming with you. You're in over your head, Rogers, and you're going to need someone to bail you out."


End file.
